Hi, I'm Matt. I'm a freelance Cameraman based near Brighton in the sometimes sunny South East of England and this is my blog.
It's going through a minor re-vamp at the mo, so bear with me..
This blog consists of work related posts, non-work related posts and posts that have very little relevance to anything...ever. Enjoy.

Yep, nearly.. FINALLY.. time to get me an iPhone. July 11th is approaching, I've "registered my interest" with O2, I'm past the end of my Orange contract (happened a couple of months back, just as O2 reduced the 8Gb iPhone price, something didn't smell right then, despite how tempted I was, so I held off.. cheers me), and I'm all set for 3G iPhone goodness (all being well with credit checks and the like!!!).

So, I've started looking in a little more detail at the available apps, after all the iPhone functionality is good, but I want more from it.

iPhone 2.0 can display all manner of Office docs, so that's ok, but you can't create/edit any. now I don't know if I'll actually need to, but I may well consider Google Docs as a possible solution. I don't currently use them, so I'll have to try them out on here first.

The GPS side of things will also be an interesting one. I'm hoping the iPhone will save me having to buy a separate SatNav device (such as a TomTom 520T that I've been considering), I don't think that the standard Google Maps will suffice, so I'll be waiting to see what TomTom's software's like, but I'll certainly give the standard system a go in the mean time on upcoming jobs (with printed directions as well, just in case!!!)

Web Apps

First stop on the App train was the Web Apps page and there's a fair few on there, including Virtual Panda...but I'm steering clear of stuff like that for the time being (no doubt I'll play some sort of game on it at some point), I'm looking at what is actually going to be of use to me, in the same sort of way I'm looking at Facebook apps. So...

Obviously, I use FB a fair bit, so this is a no-brainer, it's also a bit odd to me as to how it classifies as an 'app' rather than just an iPhone optimised page. (to be fair that's pretty much just what the Web Apps are though)

This seems interesting, a simple tape logging app, which could be quite useful, however, having thought about it a little more, possibly TOO simple, what could be great for quickly and easily logging tapes on the fly, could be a complete waste of time as there appears to be no way to export the data. So if I did want to log on loc. perhaps a Google Docs approach would be better, i'll def give it a go though.

I'm not sure if this is THE Twitter client that people are using (there's probably a Jailbreak app out there), but looks ok, the other options are simply going to twitter.com via Safari, or seeing what Twitteriffic on iPhone will be like (I've switched to twhirl on the desktop now though)

This is pretty awesome, I can definitely see myself (at least one of my friends has already been using it) referring to this reasonably regularly, you can select the camera, bear in mind this is for video cameras, everything from the Canon GL up to the Sony F23.

Another reasonably handy app, a little ugly compared to the Digital Heaven widget, and to be fair, I'm probably more likely to use the widget as it'll be on to the edit station, but maybe I'll be in PC world, wondering how big a hard drive I need for location digitising... you never know.

(possibly Tube 2) Uses the Location functions of the iPhone, tells you your nearest Tube station, then you can plan a route to where you want to go. While this does seem ok, quite useful, possibly quicker than consulting my trusty tube map leaflet, for an app that will probably be charged for there does seem to be a lack of functionality/features. Post Code search? Service updates? option of actual tube map rather than overlay?

Nothing else has sprung up yet, ebay app possibly.

Jailbreak Apps

Now I don't intend to jailbreak my phone unless there is a 100% absolute need to, I'm hoping any actual useful apps will find their way to the App Store. Many developers are complaining about not being accepted, ok Apple are limiting the initial numbers, fair enough, the other thing I think is there's a lot of crap apps out there. However...

I mean really???! How many of these even have an actual USE? How many of these actually GET USED??

I've been gradually looking for useful apps to add to my profile, and religiously blocking any attempts to get me to send a hug, bite someone, buy a drink for, etc etc etc. It's like having to deny millions of random bands on MySpace all over again!

So far this..

Is my block of apps on my profile. In order L-R and down...

Education & Work

Some basic profile info I include

My Web Profiles

A handy little app that allows you to create another 'app block' style panel for links to your other profiles online

Video

Because I want to upload videos every now and again

Notes

Linked by RSS to this blog, so updates are automatically shown on FB

Digg.com

Shows my recently Dugg stories on my profile (although I think this has been superceded by a better one that displays them in my Feed, don't think it's the same thing)

Pages

For things I WANT to support or keep tabs on this is it. It's pretty much like embedding MySpace into your profile.

Photos

Cos it's the law, and FB's implementation of photos is actually pretty good (could do with bigger albums tho)

Posted Items

Actually handy to share general links every now and again (even tho some might be shite)

Movies

Because I like movies and this is a good way of sharing thoughts on the ones I watch (in tandem with the blog), and the quizzes are quite fun too.

Wall

I'd probably put this as the most useless one of the lot (that I've got), there's better ways to communicate within FB, but at the same time it's used every now and again and I just can't give it up.

Not shown on there is TwitterSync, which (when Twitter sorts itself out), automatically updates my FB status with the most recent post on my Twitter feed. Groups and Events, both standard FB apps and useful in their own right and Revision 3 Player, which I'm gonna remove cos I forgot I had it.

Now after all Facebook is a SOCIAL network, and part of being social is having fun, so I'm not really knocking all the shite apps entirely, if people enjoy the whole Vampires vs Werewolf thing, knock yourselves out! And Scrabulous etc have proved pretty popular.

I just don't understand why some users have SO MANY apps installed, I can't see how they're using them all, they make the profiles load slower and the privacy issues must be all over the place! Also how come there's the demand for what are essentially the SAME BLOODY APP, just with different bells and whistles? Is that what were devolving to?

Apple won't support MMS because they'll go with email instead, which is better and I can still send stupid shit on it, and at the end of the day, a crapload of people will have iPhones, corporate have BlackBerry, a primarily EMAIL based device and all the other manufacturers will be playing catch-up!

Quit it already!

GPS!! Hurrah!!!

Until you're in a no mobile signal area and it can't refresh the Google Maps! :/

Have to wait to see what 3rd party SatNav stuff comes out before that's 100%